Shouts and accusations at Coatesville Area board meeting

Staff Photo by Vinny Tennis
Marchers opposing the Coatesville Area School District School Board make their way through the city to the district’s committees meeting in Coatesville on Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013.

CALN — Members of the Coatesville Area School Board continued to bear the brunt of public outrage Tuesday as calls for the removal of the district’s acting superintendent and solicitor dominated a public meeting held over a month after the controversial departure of two former administrators.

At Tuesday night’s regularly scheduled school board committees meeting in the district’s 9/10 Center auditorium, community members again criticized the school board’s handling of the resignations of former Superintendent Richard Como and former Director of Athletics and Activities Jim Donato.

The highlight of the meeting came when Acting Assistant Superintendent Teresa Powell, one of two whistleblowers who uncovered the racist and sexist text messages exchanged on Como and Donato’s district-issued cell phones, took the podium and accused acting Superintendent Angelo Romaniello of exchanging insensitive text messages about her with his predecessor.

According to Powell, the text message transcripts at the center of the district’s ongoing controversy contained exchanges that referenced her by name, and that the now acting superintendent was a key participant in those conversations.

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“Although his (Romaniello’s) text message was not racial, it was personally demeaning and uncalled for,” she said.

Romaniello denied ever receiving racist or sexually offensive messages, stating he “did not recall” if those messages were ever sent to his phone.

Many community members who spoke publicly at Tuesday’s meeting argued the school board should not permit someone who engaged in insensitive text message exchanges to continue to run the district.

Powell also continued to persist with claims that school board members who first saw the text messages attempted to cover up the exchanges and allow Como and Donato to remain in their positions.

“The school board would like to move forward from the texts, but most of have been unable to do so just yet,” Powell said. “You see, there are still some things that are still just not right.”

Powell mentioned hearing school board member Laurie Knecht’s comments on WCHE radio Tuesday morning that claimed the board had never attempted to cover up the exchanges, though they also never intended for the text messages to become public.

“I thought about that statement, and initially I asked how can she say that? Upon further reflection, I further understood why she would say that,” Powell said. “She said that because she really did not find about the text message scandal until Aug. 22.”

Powell revealed that she had sent an anonymous letter to school board members to inform them of the text messages after they were first discovered on Aug. 15. The administrator said she sent the letter after she began to believe that the school board member to whom she brought the messages, Tonya Thames Taylor, did not intend to share them with the full board.

“The problem is, Mrs. Knecht, some board members did know about the text messages a full week earlier and did in fact attempt to cover them up,” Powell said.

Powell said that on the morning of Aug. 16 she had texted Taylor to inform her she had information that would “devastate the school district and all of its citizens.”

The pair met that morning and reviewed the text messages together, Powell said.

According to Powell, Taylor was “livid and appeared to be sickened about what she saw.” After reviewing the messages, Taylor said she would immediately get district solicitor James Ellison involved, according to Powell.

Taylor, Ellison, Hawa and Powell met in Scott Middle School’s cafeteria at 7 p.m. Aug. 17 to discuss the text messages. Powell proceeded to show a still image from video footage of the group exiting the middle school at 8:39 p.m.

When originally asked to comment on the text messages in the days before the Daily Local first published them on Sept. 22, Ellison said she was unaware of the content of the messages and declined to comment.

On Tuesday, Powell said she was disheartened by the school board’s handling of the text messages.

“Dr. Taylor was adamant that when this information was provided to President Neil Campbell and Vice President Rick Ritter that Monday, that they would also be appalled and that terminating Rich Como would be imminent,” Powell said.

According to Powell, a group of school board members including Campbell, Ritter, Taylor and Joe Dunn, later met with Como to discuss the situation and the superintendent admitted to sending the text messages.

“What I wasn’t prepared to hear, what absolutely devastated me, was when she stated not only was Mr. Como not being terminated, but he was going to be permitted to stay on as superintendent,” Powell said. “I was heartbroken.”

Taylor did not specifically address Powell’s comments Tuesday, but at one point the meeting nearly broke into bedlam when the school board member’s husband, Anthony Taylor, stood in the audience and repeatedly screamed “liar” while Powell was speaking.

Community members also continued to question the high legal fees collected by Ellison’s Harrisburg law firm, Rhoads & Sinon, and urged the board to take action to remedy the high costs.

Ron Miller, a Caln resident whose daughter graduated from the district, argued the district could address budget shortfalls by reducing its legal costs.

“Perhaps one solution to the cutting of teachers would be to spend less money on legal fees in this district,” Miller said. “We’re spending over a million dollars a year for the last three years. It wasn’t a bubble, it seems to be a trend.”

According to financial reports available on the district’s website and collected at school board meetings, Rhoads & Sinon collected about $530,000 in January, February, March and August this year.

No payments to Rhoads & Sinon were included in the September financial report made available Tuesday, however during the meeting Dunn said about $184,000 was paid to the firm on Oct. 4 for costs incurred during the previous month. Financial records indicate that Rhoads & Sinon has collected well over $3 million since Feb. 2010.

However Campbell defended the high litigation charges in a statement released Tuesday night. He said the district witnessed a significant amount of savings over the years with Ellison as its legal representative.

According to Campbell, the district saved approximately $4.6 million since 2008, including $1.4 million in savings involving disputes over special education matters, an additional $1.4 million in disputes over real estate assessment appeals and legal fees from revoking Graystone Academy Charter School’s charter.

In addition to what the district is saving in legal fees, Campbell said Rhoads & Sinon charges the district $180 per hour, raising the fee $20 per hour in the past 10 years.

“The taxpayers of this district have been very well served by our solicitor. We take very seriously our commitment to use taxpayers’ dollars effectively and I’m very confident that our solicitor’s legal representation has produced significant savings for our district and all taxpayers,” Campbell said.

But the district’s legal fees appear much higher than those paid in other comparable districts. According to officials in the West Chester Area School District, that district paid about $412,900 in legal fees during the entire 2012-13 fiscal year. However about $103,470.21 of that cost was paid to a lead negotiator who was hired on the school board’s behalf in June 2012 to handle the ongoing labor negotiations with the district’s teachers.

During the 2011-12 fiscal year the West Chester Area School District paid about $308,400 in legal fees, an average of about $25,700 per month. In the 2010-11 fiscal year the district paid about $326,800 in legal fees, an average of $27,200 a month.

The Coatesville Area School District, along with Rhoads & Sinon, is conducting legal reviews of several right-to-know requests filed by the Daily Local News last week to collect more information about the district’s legal fees.